


My Head Is Stripped

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Series: The Last of the Real Ones [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Superman - All Media Types, World's Finest (Comics)
Genre: Bromance, Bruce Wayne is a Good Bro, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Let men be soft!, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, Screw toxic masculinity, Self-Indulgent, Sickfic, superbros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-10 23:44:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20143981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: Heads were stupid. And noses. And eyes. Throats. Stomachs. Joints.There was a knock at the door. The sound reverberated in Clark’s skull, making him groan. Ears. Ears could definitely go.





	My Head Is Stripped

**Author's Note:**

  * For [audreycritter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/gifts).

> "... just like a screw that's been tightened too many times"
> 
> \- Fall Out Boy

Clark Kent wanted to die.

Maybe not _die_-die, as Jimmy would put it. Maybe just discorporate. He’d met an alien race once that had done that, shed their mortal bodies to become nothing more than a collective consciousness floating in the vague shape of fog. Clark did his best not to judge the choices of others by his own worldview, but he remembered thinking their decision a sad one. 

Who wanted to go through life without the warmth of the sun on their skin or the caress of the wind in their hair? You couldn’t eat without a body, or sleep, or give your neck a satisfying crack, or hug a friend. Who wanted a life like that?

Right now, Clark did. Heads were stupid. And noses. And eyes. Throats. Stomachs. Joints.

There was a knock at the door. The sound reverberated in Clark’s skull, making him groan. Ears. Ears could definitely go.

Clark tightened his grip on his fabric shield and shuffled toward the sound. X-ray vision felt like too much work, so he leaned in and pressed his eye to the peephole. He wiped the moisture from his eye and tried again.

When the door opened, Bruce Wayne blinked at him. Just once. It was Bruce’s way of showing deliberate surprise, like taking a beat.

“You look terrible. May I come in?”

Clark muttered a return insult in the subaudible range but shuffled aside to allow Bruce to step inside.

Bruce Wayne didn’t look like he had ever wanted to discorporate in his life. Artfully tousled hair, tastefully expensive clothes without so much as a wrinkle, a good, healthy tan—even his shoes were shiny. Clark wanted to punt him into the sun.

Clark shut the door and rubbed at one weeping eye. “There. You’re in. What do you want?”

Bruce had been inspecting Clark’s apartment, but now he looked over with one eyebrow raised.

“You’re sick.”

Clark wrapped the quilt tighter around his shoulders. “Thank you, World’s Greatest Detective, what gave it away?”

Was it the white drifts of soggy, wadded tissues piled across the apartment? The way Clark was huddled in his ma’s patchwork quilt like it could protect him from nuclear winter? The abandoned, half-full glasses of cooled saltwater scattered over every flat surface? Or the way Clark’s gripe came out closer to _Dank ew, Wod’s Greadess Dedekdiv, wad gab id away?_

“Lois called. I couldn’t tell if it was code.” Bruce lifted the insulated tupperware bowl in his hand. “I brought some of Alfred’s soup.”

“Code?” Clark echoed, lost.

“I didn’t think you could get sick.” Bruce made a dismissive gesture down the length of Clark’s body, then turned away. “Where should I put the soup?”

“Not hungry,” Clark groaned. He flopped face-first on the couch, then immediately regretted the move when it cut off his limited ability to breathe.

“Feed a cold, Clark.”

“What?” Clark asked, though the word was muffled by the couch curtain.

“Feed a cold, starve a fever. It’s a saying.”

Bruce was moving around in the kitchen. Clark could hear him opening and closing cupboards and pushing aside pots and pans, but not his heartbeat or his breathing. His ears were too stuffed. It made him feel disconnected from the world.

“Where’s your thermometer?”

Clark only grunted and turned his head so his cheek was pressed against the couch instead of his nose.

Something cold and hard touched his face. Clark jerked and cracked open one eye. A thermometer hovered in front of his face.

“Where?” Clark croaked. “I don’t have one.”

“It’s mine.” At Clark’s look, Bruce shrugged. “Kids. Someone’s always sick at my house. Besides, I said I thought it was code, not that I was sure.”

Bruce tapped the metal tip against Clark’s lips. “Open up.” He slipped the thermometer under Clark’s tongue. Cool fingertips ghosted behind Clark’s ear, lingering just long enough to gauge the heat of his skin, then disappeared as Bruce retreated into the kitchen. “You don’t feel warm. Leave it in until it beeps, then tell me what the display says.”

“Mm k’n—“

“No talking,” Bruce ordered.

Clark spat the thermometer out with a gasp. “I can’t _breathe_ through my _nose_, Bruce.”

In the kitchen, Bruce was silent and Clark could picture Bruce’s long, flat-browed look. Barry called it his _Don’t be stupid_ look. “Hold your breath, then. Push the blue button and try again.”

“Yes, _Pa_,” Clark grumbled and was rewarded with a hand towel lobbed over the couch onto his head.

When the thermometer beeped, Clark pulled it out and squinted at the display. “Thirty-six? That doesn’t seem right.”

“It’s in Celsius. You don’t have a fever. Good. How did you get sick?”

Was it good? It felt pretty bad.

“Uh, remember that delegation I had to intercept last week? I’m pretty sure the translator was coming down with something.” It had been hard to tell with all the natural slime, but Clark was pretty sure his contact’s shade of purple had been off from the rest of the group.

“I don’t want to say I told you so…” Bruce began.

“But you’re going to anyways,” Clark finished with a roll of his eyes. He froze as something powerful tickled in the back of his nose, then he lunged for the box of tissues. The sneeze still rattled the walls badly enough to knock a framed photo of the farm off the opposite wall.

“I’ll clean that up,” Bruce assured him.

“You weren’t even there,” Clark whined, returning to the matter of the sickly translator.

“No, but I warned you about alien bacteria and the possibility of communicable diseases that your immune system was not prepared for. This is why we have decontamination protocols.” 

There was a tug on Clark’s quilt, and the bare foot that had fallen off the end of the couch was tucked back in. Clark snuffled and blew his nose with a mighty honk.

“What are your symptoms?” Bruce asked, once more in the kitchen.

“Uhhh…” Clark struggled to sit up and keep himself fully wrapped in the quilt. “Head. Hurts. Feels… full? Like, _full_.”

“Use your words, Mr. Reporter.”

If Clark had had the energy to turn around, he would’ve stuck out his tongue at Bruce. Instead, he burrowed deeper into his quilt cocoon.

“Sinuses, I think. My ears are all stuffed up, balance is bad. Eyes keep watering. Can’t stop sneezing.”

“Does your throat hurt?”

“Yeah. And my joints, they’re achey.”

Bruce grunted.

_Use your words… Ha._

“Lois called you?”

“Mmhmm. She was worried. She seemed to get the impression you weren’t handling it well. Can’t imagine why.”

Clark considered throwing the dish towel back, but with the way he was feeling, he’d miss Bruce and break something he couldn’t afford to replace.

“Lois asked you to babysit me?”

“No. Your mother did.”

Clark _did_ whip around at that and glared at Bruce over the back of the couch.

“She’ll be here tomorrow, but she asked me to stop by in the meantime.”

“Why you?”

“I understand the saying is ‘Game recognizes game.’” Bruce gave another shrug. “I have the experience.”

As if to prove it, Bruce lifted a full tray from the counter and carried it into the living room. “Budge over,” he instructed, nudging Clark to the end of the couch so he could sit and rest the tray on the coffee table.

Clark scooted and mentally added the phrase to his running list of words that made Bruce sound like Alfred. There was no practical purpose to this list. He just liked lists.

“Honey, lemon, and raspberry tea,” Bruce said, placing a mug in Clark’s hands. The heat meant little to him, as always, but psychologically it felt good. “Drink that, then eat some of this chicken noodle soup.”

“Bruce, I don’t think some salt and heat are going to fix this,” Clark mumbled. Bruce cast a pointed look at the glasses of saltwater. Clark brushed the unspoken point aside. “I was desperate. The internet said it worked for sore throats. I feel like I’ve swallowed a hairbrush.”

Bruce put a finger on the bottom of the mug and tipped it upward until Clark was forced to drink or end up with a lapful of tea.

“You have a cold, Clark. An alien cold, but still a cold. Most of this is all placebo, even for humans. You just have to ride it out.”

Bruce frowned down at the quilt. “Your layers are wrong. Where’s your linen closet?”

Clark gestured toward the bedroom and took another sip of tea. It was nice tea. He couldn’t completely taste it, but he could tell it was good, probably straight from Alfred’s cupboards, and the heat did feel good on his throat.

Bruce disappeared into the bedroom and returned a few minutes later with the large blue blanket Lois had taken to stealing every time she visited.

“Aw, Bruce, my ma made that,” Clark whined as Bruce pulled the quilt from his shoulders. He shivered as the air hit his skin, though the cold wasn’t something that could physically bother him.

“You’ll get it back.”

Bruce knelt and magicked a pair of socks from somewhere to pull onto Clark’s feet. Then he made Clark stand so he could wrap him in the blue blanket, then returned the quilt. Clark had to admit he did feel a little better with the feather-soft blanket against his skin.

“Now the soup.”

The mug was swapped for the bowl, and Clark did what he could to eat, but he had to stop four more times to sneeze, twice more to wipe his eyes, and once to twist his jaw to the side to try to pop his ears.

After the fifth sneeze, Clark gave up.

“I hate this.” He set the bowl aside and wiped again at his eyes. “I _hate_ this.”

“Welcome to Planet Earth.” There was a ripple in Bruce’s voice, an undertone that might have been a laugh had Clark been less visibly miserable.

Two broad, scarred hands gripped Clark’s shoulders and tugged.

“Bruce, if I lay down, I can’t—“

“Trust me.”

Clark laid down.

Bruce placed Clark’s head on his thigh just above his knee and said, “I’m going to place some eucalyptus oil under your nose. It’s an irritant to human skin, but it shouldn’t bother you, and the smell will help.”

A cotton swab dabbed at the strip of skin between Clark’s upper lip and nose. The smell was nice, like one of Lois’s soaps, and just having the new sensory input made some of the strain in Clark’s chest ease. 

“Close your eyes.”

“I don’t think I can sleep,” Clark protested even as he obeyed.

“I’m not telling you to.” A calloused thumb swiped gently at the corners of Clark’s eyes without comment, as if the tears were nothing more than the product of sinuses gone mad. “I’m going to turn on your television and enjoy a show without having to referee a wrestling match or justify the ownership of my own remote. And you are going to lie here and give me that peace and quiet for one hour.”

_Yessir,_ chimed the Midwestern schoolboy still living in Clark’s brain. Now that he thought about it, though, Bruce did sound tired. If this was what he needed, Clark could give him that. So instead of protesting, Clark only sighed and squirmed on the couch until his neck was in a more comfortable position.

Clark could hear the TV click on, volume blaring for a moment, then lower to almost inaudible. Bruce’s hands, steady and sure, began to gently press against his face.

“Facial massage can relieve sinus pressure,” Bruce explained.

Clark doubted that any amount of pressing and massaging could ease pressure in a skull built to withstand an atomic bomb. And maybe it didn’t, but the contact felt good, and when Bruce’s blunted fingers scraped upward and began running through Clark’s hair, he sighed again and let himself relax against Bruce’s soft Italian slacks.

Despite Clark’s protests, he must have fallen asleep at some point. In one breath, he was resting against Bruce’s leg, drifting under the caress of fingers in his hair and the dull and distant roar of an old-fashioned movie. In the next, the leg was gone and replaced by a pillow under Clark’s head instead. The TV was off, and in the silence, Clark could hear the faint jingle of keys. He thought about lifting his head, about thanking Bruce for spending one of his rare days off here, with him. It was just a thought, though, too close to waking up to be safe. Clark let it slip away.

A shadow fell across his face. Already halfway back to dozing, Clark didn’t move, even as careful hands rearranged his layers of blanket, straightening and tucking in corners with military precision and parental care. A hand ruffled his hair and then lifted. Clark half-expected a gruff “Goodnight, Clark-boy” from his pa. Instead, Clark was enfolded in the subtle musk of Bruce’s aftershave as lips pressed to his forehead.

He was asleep again before the front door had time to close.


End file.
